


Observing Lucifer

by Liannabob



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Chloe figures it out, F/M, Lucifer is Lucifer, M/M, POV Chloe, set somewhere in season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-31 22:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17857742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liannabob/pseuds/Liannabob
Summary: Lucifer is a mystery that Chloe wants to solve.   Or, she believed that, until the puzzle pieces started forming an unbelievable picture.She told Lucifer she accepts his statement that he's the devil because she 'needed the eggs.'  She's starting to wonder how long she can hold on to that excuse.





	Observing Lucifer

It drives Chloe nuts that she can’t find information about Lucifer beyond his arrival in Los Angeles.  She has spent hours digging.  She’s called in some of the few favors she has with other departments.  She’s even pulled his fingerprints from the bar.  She’d looked up from lifting the tape and Mazikeen had been _right there,_ watching her take the fingerprints, and her grin had been so mischievous that Chloe hadn’t been at all surprised when the database found absolutely no results.

Lucifer Morningstar is a mystery.

If she asks where he came from, he’ll tell her that he told her already – that he’d ascended from Hell, of course.

It’s infuriating.

He shows up in the precinct and catches her digging through UK birth records from 1965 through 1980.  She figures the man is somewhere in his mid to late thirties, possibly early forties.  The keyword “Lucifer” is obvious on her screen, and she’s nowhere near quick enough to hide it from him.

He laughs, delighted.

“Find anyone interesting? They must be, with a name like that.”  He preens, obviously pleased, obviously sure that Chloe had found nothing.

“Were you even born in the UK, or did the accent come later?” Chloe asks.

“I wasn’t born in the UK,” He concedes easily, still smiling widely.  He leans in to look at the screen again. “And – 1965?  Really?  You flatter me.  I’m much older than that, dear detective.  Much, much older.”

 

~*~

 

As far as Chloe can tell, Lucifer doesn’t ever lie about anything else.  Just his family and himself through the filter of his religious delusion.  Even when it would be polite or much easier to lie, he tells the truth. 

Sometimes, Chloe suspects, he does it just because he loves stirring shit.  The rest of the time, though, it’s clear he’s operating out of some sort of firmly defined personal code of ethics or self-imposed rules.  For someone who pretends to be the devil, he is oddly moral about some things.

He is a master of misdirection and half-truths, and she’s seen him do it to Dan a dozen or more times.  Lucifer will hand out a few bald facts that paint a completely different picture than the reality because of the information being left out.  It’s a game to him, she knows.  A point of pride.

It makes her oddly sorry about whatever trauma or abuse he’d suffered that pushed him into being “Lucifer.”  With his intelligence and charisma, she wonders who he’d’ve been if not for that catalyst.  A famous musician, maybe.  Or a politician.  Something in the spotlight, that’s for sure.

She plays a guessing game with herself; trying on different names for the man, trying to find which one felt correct.  John.  Fabio.  David.  Marcel.  Rumpelstiltskin.

None of them fit.

At some point, “Lucifer” stops being the name of the devil and becomes, instead, familiar.  A string of syllables that means “that shameless, handsome-and-far-too-aware-of-it, narcissistic man-child.”  Her partner.

It’s similar, she thinks, to the way that Lucifer calls her “Detective.”  It isn’t a title.  There are plenty of detectives around.  Dan is almost always “detective douche” and never just “detective.”  When Lucifer says “Detective,” he means “Chloe.”

 

~*~

 

Lucifer is over at her house.  It’s early evening and he’s wandered by/broken in to discuss the legality of dire vengeance over a “filthy mortal” touching his piano.

She and Trixie are eating sundaes and both of them are enjoying the show.  Lucifer in a snit is definitely entertaining.  Chloe will have to make sure Lucifer understands that breaking people’s hands, no matter how much he wants to, is completely illegal and she’d definitely have to arrest him, and no, not in a fun way.  She’s pretty sure this tirade of his is a show, and has a suspicion he’d come over just to see her.  She wouldn’t dare call him on it, though. 

She and Trixie exchange glances when he breaks into a new rant about a spider that had had the audacity to set up camp in his convertible.

“Did you leave the top down overnight?” Chloe asks.

“Of course,” He says, indignant as a wet cat and completely failing to draw the obvious connection between the two events.

“It probably crawled in during the night, then.”

“But it’s a private garage,” He says angrily, and Trixie bursts into giggles.  Chloe keeps a straight face with difficulty.

They’ve reached the bottom of their sundaes and Chloe takes the cherry out by the stem.  Trixie does the same, and they bump the red fruits against each other before popping the whole things in their mouths.

“Are you… tying the cherry stems?” Lucifer asks, derailed.

“Mhm,” Chloe mumbles.

“Do you want to try?” Trixie asks, somewhat messily.  She’s still chewing the fruit.  It’s not a good look, and Chloe nearly does laugh at Lucifer’s bewildered disgust.

Lucifer looks back at her, and at her cheek and the muscle visibly working there, and his eyebrow is raised high enough that Chloe has to roll her eyes.  She cuts off whatever lewd suggestion he’s about to make by covering her mouth with her hand and saying: “It doesn’t have to be salacious.  It’s fun.  We always do this.”  She bumps her little monkey’s shoulder with her own, and Trixie beams.  Trixie spits out the stem.  It’s… folded, more than tied, but Trixie ties the sodden thing with her fingers and displays it proudly nonetheless.

Lucifer is watching Chloe, though, and there’s some challenge in his eyes that she feels just relaxed and reckless enough to meet.  A few more tongue twists and she removes a neatly knotted stem from her mouth.

“Such skills,” Lucifer purrs, smiling with pure surprised delight.  Chloe is already regretting her decisions.  She is sure he will mention this moment at the absolutely least appropriate time.

“Did you want to try?” Trixie tries again.  She puts the admittedly gross cherry stem on the table and picks up the jar of cherries, offering it to Lucifer, her sticky fingers smearing on the glass.

He plucks one out by the tip of the stem and puts the fruit to his lips.  In one hard suck, the fruit pops off the stem.  He swallows it whole and puts the stem in his mouth.

“You’re supposed to chew your food!” Trixie scolds, and Chloe is glad she’s distracted because she can feel that she’s blushing.  Lucifer is staring straight at Chloe, and she can see the little motions in his jaw and cheeks as his tongue works.

“What kind of knot is _that_?” Trixie asks when he removes the stem a few seconds later.

“Windsor,” Lucifer replies, winking.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Lucifer has a scar under his chin.  It’s only noticeable by the smooth line of skin exposed when he tilts his head just so – a bit of flesh not covered by his habitual five o’clock shadow.  She asks about it and he’s silent for so long that she thinks he won’t answer.

Eventually, he shrugs.

“I got it from my brother.”

“Amenadiel?”

“Micheal,” Lucifer corrects, eyes hard and distant for just a moment.  A flash of real emotion before it’s covered with a grin.

Michael, Chloe thinks.  Like the archangel.  She wants to ask but is sure that Lucifer would just say he got it in the rebellion against heaven.

She doesn’t ask.

  

~*~

 

Chloe tells Lucifer that she accepts his crazy because she “needs the eggs.”

Part of that’s true.

Most of that’s true.

There is, though, that persistent sliver of doubt that eats at her.  How much of it is because she accepts his crazy, and how much of it is because she doesn’t want to believe he’s not?

Because if he isn’t lying – if he _actually_ is the _actual_ _devil_...

It’s too big.  It’s too much.  Too far-fetched and a hundred other excuses for not looking at it too closely.

Chloe is a detective, but she throws away Lucifer’s blood sample.

  

~*~

 

Lucifer is an excellent cook.

It’s a Saturday morning and she wakes up not to her alarm or Trixie climbing into her bed, but to a smooth baritone voice singing in her kitchen and the smell of cooking food.

She pulls her pillow over her face to muffle a frustrated scream.

She gets up, pajama pants and top firmly in place, and glowers at Lucifer when she shuffles into the kitchen.

Trixie, the traitor, is already sitting at the counter and grinning at Lucifer as he cooks.  Chloe doesn’t recognize the song he’s crooning.  Something bluesy and lilting.  It suits his voice.

“Why are you in my house?” She interrupts.  Her hair, she knows, is a wreck.  Her pajamas have a juice stain all across the shoulder.  She isn’t wearing makeup. 

“Detective, do you always wake up so lovely?” He gives her a blatant once-over and it could so easily have been a mocking line, but wasn’t.  He’s looking at her like he’s hungry, and it has nothing to do with the pancakes he’s assembling.  She’d be flattered if she wasn’t so annoyed.

“He’s making breakfast,” Trixie tells her.  Her little monkey is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the way that only children can be at this hour.

“Coffee,” Chloe demands, nearly a grunt, and Lucifer places a mug in front of her with a flourish.  His suit and hair are impeccable.  When his hand retreats, she catches a whiff of his cologne.

She kind of hates him.

He places a plate of pancakes down in front of Trixie, and she hates him a little less.

“I don’t know how you keep getting in here,” Chloe says, drinking coffee that tastes much better than her normal brew, damn him.  Did he bring it with him?   “I changed the locks.”

“Yes, an excellent precaution. You can never be too careful,” Lucifer agrees cheerfully, completely not answering.  He serves out another plate of pancakes and puts it in front of her, fork and knife on a napkin that he slides over to rest beside it.  The food looks like it came from a magazine spread.

She cannot help but roll her eyes.

She eats the annoyingly good pancakes.  Her daughter sings praises for Lucifer's cooking in between bites, much to his obvious pleasure.  Chloe has to stop Lucifer from dishing out more because the man clearly has no idea that too much sweet food will make a kid sick.

Chloe is working on her second cup of coffee, and Lucifer has settled on the other side of the island to eat his own breakfast.  He uses his fork to cut neat, perfectly sized bites.  Not a drop of syrup out of place.  Trixie is clearly enamored with him and Chloe _wants_ to say she that doesn’t understand why.

Lucifer has charisma in spades, and Trixie had thought he was joking when he’d told her to ‘fetch.’  Lucifer talks to Trixie like an adult, which has drawbacks, but it also clearly flatters her kiddo.  She assumes Lucifer will get tired of the interaction when Trixie starts hounding him with questions.  Chloe lets her have at it.  If outright telling him not to break into her house isn’t a deterrent, maybe having to deal with an infatuated eight year old will work.

“Are you really the devil?”

“Yes.”

“No, but really?”

“Yes.”

“No, but are you really the devil?”

“Still yes.”

“So, you’re in charge of Hell?”

“I used to be.”

“What’s your favorite color?"

Lucifer blinks at the sudden change in direction, but rallies.  Chloe is a little impressed with his patience.

“Black, but I’m versatile.”

Trixie pauses, because she’s expecting Lucifer to ask her what _her_ favorite color is in return.  Chloe hides a smile in her mug, because Lucifer is completely oblivious.

“Are there dogs in Hell?” Trixie asks.  They’d watched All Dogs Go to Heaven almost a year ago, well before she’d met Lucifer.  Chloe had watched it when she was younger and had somehow forgotten/blocked out the Hell scenes.  She’s not surprised that Trixie remembered them.  They’re pretty grim for a kid’s movie.

Lucifer waves a dismissive hand.

“They pop in from time to time but they never stay long.  Souls can only stay in Hell as long as they believe they belong there.  Inevitably, dogs that die believing they’re bad dogs will find one of the damned with a lingering soft spot for canines.  A few pats, a few ‘good dogs,’ and off they pop.  Dad must be up to his ankles in them by now.”

“Are there cats in Hell?”

“Oh, of course.  They know they’re assholes.”

“Okay!” Chloe puts up a hand to stop the conversation, glaring at Lucifer as Trixie laughs at the swear word.

 

 

~*~

 

 

They grab hotdogs from a street vendor on the way to a chop shop that is possibly hiding the gun used at the homicide they’re investigating.  It’s mid-morning and the shop doesn’t officially open for another half an hour.  She doesn’t think the employees were in on it, so no reason not to wait and get their consent for a search.

Even with the hotdog layered in onions and ketchup and relish, Lucifer manages to avoid dripping any of it on his suit.  Chloe manages the same only through an abundance of napkins to hold everything together.

It’s perhaps twenty minutes later when she hears Lucifer’s stomach gurgle.  He presses a hand to his stomach, a look of such confusion on his face that Chloe almost laughs.  How dare his stomach imply he’s less than perfect.

The confusion on Lucifer’s face turns to concern, and Chloe is about to ask him if he’s okay when the shop’s garage door rolls open.  It’s on the tip of Chloe’s tongue to introduce herself and get to work when the employee catches sight of her badge and immediately flees back into the shop.

She curses and grabs the rolling door before it can close, pushing it up and darting inside.  Lucifer is running along beside her.  The garage is cluttered with cars, some lifted on supports, some broken down husks, one or two that look so new that they’re probably stolen.

When the gunshot rings out, she grabs Lucifer by the collar and yanks him down beside her next to one of the cars, angling them behind the engine block for the best cover.

She’s on with dispatch, relaying her position, requesting back-up, when Lucifer tilts over and messily throws up.

He pants, looking appalled, and another round rolls through him.  He’s at least had the presence of mind to aim it on towards the tail end of the car and hasn’t left cover.  Chloe’s first thought is maternal and experienced: that the garage floor will at least be easy to clean up.

“Is this,” Lucifer gasps between gagging, “Is this _food poisoning?_   Am I poisoned?  It’s not enough to get shot, I have to suffer _this_ in your presence as well?”  He leans back against the car and wipes his mouth with a handkerchief.  He glares at her accusingly, which Chloe doesn’t think is particularly fair.

“I am never eating in your presence again,” He says darkly.  He looks so miserable and so like Trixie when she’s sick that Chloe can’t help but feel sympathy.

Backup arrives.  The shooter is apprehended, the hidden gun retrieved.  They still need to run prints and ballistics but Chloe is confident they’ll match.

Lucifer had vanished while they’d been combing the site for the gun, looking pale and sweaty and ill, wobbly on his feet.  Chloe had let him go without comment, pretending not to notice.  Lucifer’s dignity was important to him and it’d’ve been unkind to tease him for being sick.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes later, though, when he came bounding back to the scene.

“You okay?” She asked, eyeing him up and down, because against all logic he looks like he’s back to perfect health.

“I just needed to walk it off,” He said, adjusting his cuffs.  He ignores the puddle of vomit as though he had nothing at all to do with it, and he does it with such certainty that Chloe almost believes it.  The man in front of her is clearly not sick.  He had very clearly been very sick ten minutes ago.

There are questions about Lucifer that Chloe knows she should ask.  She _knows_ she should ask them.

She doesn’t ask.

 

  
~*~

 

  
"You realize it's just an expression, right?   Most people aren't actually referring to god when they say it.  A lot of people who say it aren’t even religious. It's just an exclamation."

Lucifer scowled and readjusted his jacket, looking thoroughly miffed.  "It's still annoying," He settled on.   He glared at the motel wall, far more bothered by the distant rhythmic 'oh god, oh god, oh my god' sex noises than by the disemboweled corpse at his feet.  

And that was another thing.  Dead bodies - hell, the most violent crime scenes Chloe had ever seen - didn't phase Lucifer in the slightest.   Why was he so desensitized?  Had he been to med school, she wondered?   Worked in crime scene clean-up, been to a war zone... the missing years of Lucifer's life could have been filled with _anything_ and Chloe wasn't sure any answer would surprise her.   Lucifer was a mystery.  He looked at her, like he could read what she'd been thinking, and the smirk that spread across his face was far too pleased.  

"What do you call out in bed, Detective Decker?  You could be one of the silent stoic types, but I doubt it.  I bet you're a screamer.  I bet you'd tug my hair out by the _handful_ if we did this properly." He looked at her crotch and actually licked his lips. 

It would have been more effective if the room hadn't reeked of viscera.

"The station has regular sexual harassment seminars.  I really should make you attend one now that you're an official consultant."

"Oh Detective, if I ever cross a line, you're more than welcome to punish me yourself."

There was a closet - a very, very large closet - in the penthouse at Lux that was completely full of sex toys, bondage equipment, an entire shelf of oils and lubes...  Chloe knew this because she'd gone up to collect Lucifer for a case and he'd been reorganizing the whips and floggers when she walked in.   

Chloe wished she didn't know about the closet, because she could tell that Lucifer could tell that she was thinking about it when he said the word 'punish.'   He looked far too smug.

The man was the freaking devil, she thought, and made him focus back on the case.    

 

~*~

 

 

The scars on Lucifer’s back are… large.

Chloe didn’t major in forensics but she’s not exactly ignorant on the subject either.  She’s never seen scars quite like them and struggles to picture a wound that would have caused them that _wasn’t_ having wings chopped off.

Ritual scarification, maybe?  The marks are so symmetrical that they could have been deliberately placed.

They arrest a kid a week or so later who has a whole slew of piercings and tattoos.  He has a Celtic knot scarified on his forearm.  Chloe points it out and, to Lucifer, says “That must have hurt.”

Lucifer shrugs, noncommittal.

“The things you humans do for vanity always find new ways to surprise me.”

It’s not the reaction of someone who had undergone a similar procedure.

Chloe remembers the soft “Don't...please” that Lucifer had said when she’d reached out to touch the scars, that surreal evening when he’d decided to 'even the score' by showing Chloe his naked body.

His reaction to the scars had possibly been the first moment of vulnerability he’d displayed, and knowing him much better now, she could recognize how rare a moment it truly was.

Chloe knows the scars are sensitive.

Once, she had reached out to get his attention, a detail in the file leaping out to her, and she’d patted his back with all the urgent excitement that came with a break in the case.

Lucifer had flinched.

Lucifer was tactile.  He enjoyed touching and enjoyed being touched.  He was a hedonist and by all accounts a complete slut, and yet when Chloe had touched his back, he’d flinched.

“Sorry,” She’d apologized quickly, and Lucifer waved it off, already covering the moment with a fresh smile.

“What’ve you found, Detective?”

 

  
~*~

 

  
Lucifer...

Chloe doesn't know, or doesn't want to know, what trick he pulls to make people believe he's actually the devil, but she's seen the results enough times to know that whatever mind-whammy he's pulling, it hit some people powerfully.   

She's read a lot about hypnotism in that last few months.   Some people are more susceptible than others.   It's weird how the susceptible ones keep finding their way into Lucifer's path.   

"Try it on me," She asks, one evening when she's doing the paperwork at the end of a case and he's hovering in the precinct - mostly, as far as Chloe can tell, to annoy Dan and distract her from her work.

He quirks a brow, eating another spoonful of stolen pudding.

"The... mind trick that you do,” She clarifies before he can make suggestions.  “Try it on me?"

"We've established that it doesn't work, detective."  He says, and it's unusual for Lucifer to be so obvious in his misdirections.

"Not the desire thing.  The 'oh shit, he's actually the devil' thing.  How do you do it?   Alex Fideles," She taps the case file with her pen, “Was an ex-con mercenary, and I turn my back for twenty seconds, and you have him crying on the floor.   What's the secret?"

"I'm the devil," He says, grinning, flippant, falling back on familiar lines.

She puts her hand on his, and the grin slides off his face in the wake of her seriousness.  She feels his fingers tense under hers.

"That's MINE," Dan barks, coming over, and for a split second, Chloe is blindingly angry that he'd refer to her like a possession, before Dan snatches the pudding cup out of Lucifer's other hand.

 

  
~*~

 

 

The breadth of Lucifer’s knowledge of culture and history takes Chloe off guard all the time.  He’ll casually drop trivia about Roman calendars or D-Day or Buddhism.  There’s a dining set at one of the crime scenes printed with depictions, he tells her, of a secret Catholic society called “The Order of the Pug.”  He’d been delighted to relay the ridiculousness of it to her.  18th Century, he tells her.  Bavaria.  Off the top of his head, matter of fact.

The first several times he’d done something like that, Chloe had googled it later just to try to reassure herself that he’s spewing bullshit or making it up on the spot.  He  never is.

She wonders if he has an eidetic memory.

Despite serious effort on her part, she’s still been unable to find anything about Lucifer’s past beyond the last five years.  He’s clearly well-read.  She wouldn’t be surprised if he was hiding a degree... or two... or five.

She asks him, once, what college he went to.

He’d just looked at her, head cocked, puzzled, and told her it depended on which sorority was having a party that day.

 

~*~

 

Chloe has yet to find a language that Lucifer doesn’t speak.  Los Angeles is a melting pot and Lucifer is, no pun intended, a god-send when it comes to getting information quickly.  Chloe hasn’t had to send for a translator since he started his infatuation with police work.  He switches easily from Chinese to Armenian to Persian – whatever the situation throws at him.  He is faultlessly fluent, even as Chloe thinks she can still hear a bit of his British accent in the unfamiliar syllables.  She wonders again about his education.

“I’m very, very good with my tongue,” He says, not really an answer, when she asks how many languages he speaks.

She watches his hands – strong, elegant, the hands of a piano player – weaving out ASL for the deaf informant they’re interviewing.  Body language plays a part in ASL, she knows, but Chloe doesn’t need the English translation to understand he’d just said something completely filthy.

The informant is charmed, blushing, nodding.

“Lucifer,” Chloe says flatly.

He looks at her askance, completely unrepentant.

“Does she know what day Mr. Shaw said he’d be back?”

“Hm? Oh, Tuesday,” He signs something else, and the informant’s grin is lascivious when she signs back an answer.

Chloe signs ‘Thank you,’ – one of the few ASL phrases she knows – and drags Lucifer out of the room by the lapel.

  

~*~

 

  
Lucifer is completely shameless, and he will regrettably pick up the phone to answer her whenever she calls.   Normally, this would be an admirable quality in a partner, but with Lucifer, it's nerve-wracking.

"I've got a lead.  I think the carnival worker at the pier used the game to launder money.  We should be able to...Lucifer?"  She trails off, because she can hear, clearly, on the other end of the phone, sounds that she can only attribute to someone getting a very wet and vigorous blowjob.

"Yes, darling, did you want me to meet you there?"  Lucifer asks, and she can hear the lazy smirk in his voice.

"Are you -?"  She stops.  She shouldn't ask.   She really shouldn't be shocked by him anymore.

"Oh, that, yes, this beautiful lad is getting me to check his tonsils. Which, I can assure you, he doesn’t have.   You're doing _great_ ,"  He adds, the last clearly not directed at Chloe.

"Lucifer!” She finds herself at a loss for words, and on the other end of the line, the sucking sound intensifies and Lucifer moans. Chloe pinches the bridge of her nose.

Lucifer chuckles breathily.  "I'll meet you at the pier in, let's say forty minutes?"

Chloe makes a strangled sound that passes for assent and hangs up.     
  
Lucifer meets her at the pier forty minutes later, looking exactly as he always does, which makes her wonder if 'freshly laid' is just his default setting. 

It is nowhere near the last time she calls with a case update when he's in the middle of having sex. 

She concludes that, yes.  Yes it is just his normal look.

 

  
~*~

 

  
Lucifer is strong.   Crazy, gym-bunny strong, but she's never seen him go to the gym and can't imagine where he'd find the time in his busy schedule of police consultant, night-club owner, and mega slut.   Sex was a good workout, but it didn't explain Lucifer's dead-lift.  She had watched him pluck a safe off the ground and place it onto a table to have easier access at the lock.  Thoughtlessly.  Without effort.  The table had groaned and been dented by the edges.   For a moment, Chloe had thought it would break under the weight. Lucifer hadn't noticed.

When she'd been poisoned…

After she'd been poisoned, after the dust had settled, after she was back to being hale and healthy and Trixie had stopped looking so afraid, Chloe had looked through the crime scene photos again.   They showed the door that the two young men had been trapped behind had been ripped off its hinges.   No tools lying around.  No jaws of life or crowbars.  No extra gas masks, either.   

Lucifer had told her to run. To catch the bad guy. That he could handle this, but to do it, she needed to trust him and leave.

Chloe had. She had trusted him, when all her logic and reason told her there wasn’t possibly anything that he could do. She had run, because she remembered Lucifer disappearing before her eyes, plucking a bullet out of the air, and she remembered him being dead on the floor of a hanger bay, and coming back to life like it was nothing. She remembered Amenadiel trying to convince her it had all been a trick, and how she had viscerally rejected the explanation.

She was a cop, and her instincts had said Amenadiel was lying, and they had told her that Lucifer could handle the situation if she trusted him.

Chloe thought about all the questions she _didn’t_ ask, and about excuses about needing Lucifer’s crazy eggs.  She thought about why she had thrown away Lucifer’s blood sample. 

The things she wasn’t thinking about loomed in her mind like a dark bubble, and she knows if she’s not careful, it’ll pop.

She was uncomfortably self-aware that she was in denial.

 

  
~*~

 

Dr. Linda Martin looks at Lucifer in a way that’s almost awe, almost existential terror, when she thinks Lucifer isn’t looking.  Chloe sees it, and thinks “She _knows_. She knows the truth about him.”

 

~*~

  

She thinks about Jimmy Barnes; crazed, bludgeoning his head against the plexiglass separating them, blood splattering and unnoticed.  She thinks about him screaming, over and over, that Lucifer was the devil.

 

~*~

 

Chloe thinks about Lucifer getting brain-freeze from an iced latte, and how he’d glared at her like it had been her fault.  Chloe wishes she’d taken a picture.

 

~*~

 

Chloe remembers how oddly hurt Lucifer had been upon watching the staggeringly long stream of beautiful people filter through the precinct and talk about how amazing he’d been in bed... and how it had been meaningless. 

Just sex.  Really _good_ sex, they’d all been quick to clarify.  REALLY, mind-blowingly good sex. 

But… just sex.  No strings or emotions attached.

When Lucifer had kissed her – no, when _she_ had kissed _Lucifer_ … it hadn’t been emotionless.

Chloe thinks about the night she’d come to Lux, drunk and angry and had all but thrown herself at the man.  And Lucifer, with his odd sense of nobility, had poured her drunk ass into bed and let her sleep it off.

It had been so early in their relationship.  Well before she’d heard the endless string of testimonials.  Chloe had done it because she’d been hurting and lonely and wanted a connection.

At the time, she hadn’t put two and two together to see that she’d been trying to connect to someone _else_ who was lonely and hurting.

And how could it possibly be true, Chloe thinks, that _she_ was someone that Lucifer actually wanted to connect with too, when Lucifer was –

 

 

~*~

 

 

The case was messy.  Two women dead, probably the wife’s fault, the husband missing and probably dead.  Signs pointed at infidelity and a crime of passion, but the wife claimed she knew nothing about it.

“You didn’t know he was cheating?” Chloe asks, trying to be gentle.

“No!  No, he wasn’t cheating.  They were just his friends!”

"Well, _obviously_ he was cheating,” Lucifer says, exasperated, unkind.  “The evidence was _right there_ , right in front of you.   You humans and your _willful_ ignorance," He looks at Chloe when he says it, shaking his head as if dismissing the entire human race.

He leans forward, catching Mrs. Wong’s eye, and asks, “What is it you desire?”

Chloe watches the suspect’s pupils blow wide.  She’s seen Lucifer do this so many times, but this time, it’s harder.  She knows it’s not a trick.  It’s not hypnotism.

“I want Tony to love me,” Mrs. Wong says.  Present tense.  If she’d killed him, Chloe is sure it would have been past tense.  It makes her more sure that Mrs. Wong didn’t do it; that they’re perhaps looking for another jealous mistress.

“Did Tony have any other friends that he spent a lot of time with?” Chloe asks.

 

~*~

 

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Chloe says, removing the sharpie from Lucifer’s hands before he can act on the mischief she can see brewing in his eyes.

He pouts at her, and she continues.

“If you only got out of Hell five years ago, why are you so comfortable with,” Chloe waves a hand, “Smart phones. The internet. Airplanes.”

Lucifer scoffs.

“I could hardly dispense appropriate punishment if I didn’t understand the crime.  Granted, this last century has moved at a breathtaking pace, but I’ve always made sure to stay abreast of the new ways you humans find to inflict suffering.  There are whole new wings in Hell for people who post revenge porn, or write viruses.  Catfishers, trolls, online pedophiles.  People that talk in the theatre.”  His hands move as he talks, shaping Hell’s architecture.

Chloe grunts, nodding.  It made sense.

Lucifer looks at her sharply but, for once, he’s the one who doesn’t ask.

 

~*~

 

 

The suspect runs, firing widely at them, and Chloe takes cover behind one of the parking deck’s columns before rushing after him.  Lucifer breaks off to the side exit, and Chloe can see he’s trying to cut the man off around the side and block that escape path.  Lucifer, when he isn’t being annoying, is an excellent partner.

She catches up to them, the perp having gone that way after all, and she can see that Lucifer’s already done his thing.  The gun is on the ground, the man curled into a terrified ball, and Lucifer adjusts his suit jacket, as pleased as a cat that had just dropped off a half-dead mouse.

“Mr. Michaels, you are under arrest,” Chloe says, and starts reading off his rights, following procedure.  He doesn’t protest the handcuffs and in fact looks like he’d happily part with organs if it meant getting distance between himself and Lucifer.

She doesn’t ask Lucifer what he did to reduce him to this state.  She knows.

“And you,” She tells Lucifer when they’re escorting Michaels back to her car.  Lucifer is hovering around Michaels, working him, just by proximity, into a full-blown terror.  “Quit that.  Get thee behind me.”

Chloe is _far_ too pleased with the look that earns her.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Chloe Decker is not religious.  She’s been to church only a dozen or so times.  She understood the basics, and had studied more when cases called for it.  She had read up quite a bit more when trying to research Lucifer.

For the longest time, she’d assumed the religious terms Lucifer used were some sort of coded language for other, less biblical events.

She isn’t religious, but this is still a _lot_ to swallow.

Chloe is glad, distantly, that she hadn’t said that out loud in his presence, because there’s no way he wouldn’t have turned it into a sex joke.

 

 

~*~

 

 

She kisses Lucifer again.

It’s another morning when he’s broken in to cook breakfast.  They’re not in the middle of a case, and Trixie is with Dan this weekend.  Lucifer had cooked enough for two.  Chloe doesn’t even question how he’d known she was home alone.

She acts on the impulse to kiss him because…

Because he’d been standing at her sink, his shirtsleeves rolled up over his muscled forearms, and cleaning the spoon he’d used to scrape the seeds from tomato segments.  He’d turned the spoon in just the wrong way, and water had ricocheted from the faucet to splash down his front.  He’d looked so disgruntled and offended, glaring at the spoon like it’d been the utensil’s fault, and Chloe doesn’t want to fight the surge of affection that wells up in her for her impossible pain-in-the-ass partner.  For Lucifer Morningstar.

She tugs him down and, for a moment, he is so surprised and pleased that it makes her heart ache.

“Chloe,” He tells her, pulling back, looking pained even as he puts his hands on her shoulders to hold her at a distance.  “Chloe, there are things… things about me that...”

“I know,” Chloe says, breathing it out, and she’d thought accepting this would feel like a weight.

It doesn’t.

It feels like a release.

 “I _know_ ,” She repeats, smiling, and leans in again.

 

 

-End-

 

 


End file.
